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J&R Alters the Blocklong Layout It’s Known For

J&R Music and Computer World once dominated Park Row from the corner of Ann Street to Beekman Street.Credit
Joshua Bright for The New York Times

A stroll south of City Hall toward Park Row can inspire a wish list — guitars, computers, cameras, stereos, CDs, even vinyl records — in anticipation of the emporium, stretching from Beekman Street to Ann Street, that had long been J&R Music and Computer World.

But a visit these days may inspire a double-take instead.

The corner space at 34 Park Row that once housed J&R’s camera department is becoming a Ricky’s beauty supply store. Next door to that, where J&R once sold musical instruments, is a Ricky’s pop-up Halloween shop. Then it’s one empty J&R storefront (consumer electronics) after another (appliances, video games), except for a hardware store in the middle of the block.

Did J&R go the way of other electronic and music purveyors like Crazy Eddie’s, The Wiz or HMV? No. Instead, J&R is abandoning its familiar horizontal shopping bazaar for a vertical one.

Where it once occupied eight buildings in Lower Manhattan, the business is now filling just two on Park Row — five floors each at Nos. 15 and 1. The sales space at 15 Park Row had just been on the ground floor and mezzanine level, but J&R is building up and knocking down the walls that connect it to 1 Park Row.

“We wanted to bring the store into the 21st century,” said Rachelle Friedman, the “R” in J&R. The “J” is her husband, Joseph. The revamped layout, which opened this year, saves money by reducing staffing and space redundancies, Ms. Friedman said. The Friedmans also own the empty storefronts, and the buildings they are in, and are in negotiations with possible tenants.

“We should have done it a while ago but we kept putting it off,” Ms. Friedman said. Restructuring can be costly and time-consuming, but she said she also felt a “sentimental reluctance” to relinquish their store’s physical presence. (In 2011, the store lobbied the local community board, unsuccessfully, for an honorary “J&R Row” street sign.)

Ms. Friedman would not discuss the business’s financial details — including the store’s revenue, the reconfiguration’s cost or the rental potential of the empty storefronts.

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Its new layout occupies five floors of Nos. 1 and 15 at the corner of Ann Street.Credit
Joshua Bright for The New York Times

Workers at the store declined to be interviewed. But in private several employees blamed the struggling economy and the proliferation of online shopping for the consolidation. Ms. Friedman said the transformation was more about improving J&R’s business model and shopping experience.

“We did a focus group to see what our customers wanted,” Ms. Friedman said. People complained about having to go outside and down the block to get the item they wanted, she said, and about waiting in multiple lines to buy items in different locations.

“It was confusing,” she said, adding that each store had its own set of greeters, cashiers and security personnel, as well as its own storage space.

“This will give customers a better store experience and will be a lot more efficient,” Ms. Friedman said, acknowledging that streamlining meant laying off some employees, though she declined to give a number.

The change has taken some people by surprise. “People come in here every day asking what happened to J&R,” said Madison Peterson, the manager of the Ricky’s Halloween store.

“It feels weird to go outside and not see J&R to the left or the right,” said Ramon Roldan, the manager of the hardware store, Weinstein & Holtzman.

J&R opened in 1971 as a side project for the Friedmans, who were then two 20-year-olds from Brooklyn. They sold TVs and stereos out of a 500-square-foot store at 33 Park Row while Joseph worked as an electrical engineer at Western Union and Rachelle studied chemistry at Polytechnic University, in Brooklyn.

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Some new storefronts have moved in.Credit
Joshua Bright for The New York Times

Building their empire was really an experiment in continuous adaptation.

Customers asked about music so they started selling records. After their sons were born, Ms. Friedman started a mail-order business from home. By 1979, their record catalog was so large that the Friedmans expanded to 23 Park Row. As technology changed, J&R changed with it, adding beepers, video games, fax machines, computers and cellphones to their shelves.

To accommodate all the new products the Friedmans gradually bought up more neighboring buildings. By 1998, J&R occupied eight buildings covering 300,000 square feet and carried merchandise that included watches and exercise equipment.

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That same year the Friedmans started a Web site, which provided a critical cushion after Sept. 11, 2001. Ash and soot from the terrorist attacks caused millions of dollars in damage. And as Lower Manhattan was slow to rebound, so was J&R. “It was very scary and painful,” Ms. Friedman said.

But the area’s revival has brought an influx of new customers, Ms. Friedman said.

Regular customers have had mixed reactions. “It is more convenient to be able to do one-stop shopping,” said Douglas Carol, 56, of Brooklyn.

But Guy Guarino, 58, of Brooklyn, said the store no longer had the extensive inventory that made it famous. “It definitely feels smaller,” he said. “There’s not as much to see.”

This complaint was echoed online by a commenter on a forum of a music engineer’s Web site saying, “I’m sure I’ll end up going there a few more times, but it’s the sad end of an era for me,” which led to a similar response, “J&R is now very cramped and the experience is nothing like it was! What a shame!”

But Ms. Friedman said that the store had the same amount of inventory, but in less space, and that certain departments that were scaled back during the renovation, like musical instruments and J&R Jr., would eventually be restored.

The Friedmans continue to experiment; they are adding a performance space that will also be available for weddings and yoga classes. “As a community institution,” Ms. Friedman said, “you have to adapt.”

A version of this article appears in print on October 24, 2013, on Page A22 of the New York edition with the headline: Familiar Shop Alters a Layout It’s Known For. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe